


splayed out wide open so honest

by ShyAudacity



Series: Riverdale Prompt Fills [6]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Altered Mental States, Angst, Anxiety, Caring Jughead Jones, Caring Veronica, Crying, Dissociation, Gen, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, Mental Health Issues, Night Terrors, Panic Attacks, Post-Canon, Post-Season/Series 01, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Queerplatonic Relationships, Sleep Deprivation, Worried Jughead, sort of idk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-28
Updated: 2017-05-28
Packaged: 2018-11-05 23:31:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11023881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShyAudacity/pseuds/ShyAudacity
Summary: anon asked: archie in the weeks following the season finaleanon asked: one where Archie hasn't cried since Fred was shot





	splayed out wide open so honest

**Author's Note:**

> I got both of these prompts and then thought to myself "...why not just combine them?" and now here we are. Shout out to the anon(s) who gave me these prompts in the first place. Please tell me if you think I missed any tags.
> 
> Unbeta'd and title from Neil Hilborn's "Joey."

Other than the freak out he had once he was at the hospital Archie Andrews hasn’t cried about his dad being shot. He chalks it up to trauma, or some weird form of coping. Either way, he hasn’t shed a single tear and that makes him uneasy, some part of him feels like he should be a giant, sobbing mess. He’s become numb to emotions, but he’s trying to ignore that, not wanting to make the situation about him when there are greater tasks at hand.

Fred is going to be in the hospital for at least a month, maybe more, and that doesn’t include the time he’ll spend in rehab for physical therapy. Archie doesn’t know how they’re going to pay for all of it. The last time they’d talked about it, his dad had told him that the business, his construction business, hadn’t been doing well. Archie had gotten a hold of his mom after the accident, she’d told him she had just been assigned some big murder case at work and that she wouldn’t be able to come help out right now.

“ _Are you gonna be okay, kiddo? By yourself, I mean. This is a lot for a kid your age to handle.”_

Before he could stop himself, he told her that he’d be fine and not to worry about him, told her that he’d check in again later. That was the morning after the accident, and he hasn’t called her since.

Sheriff Keller, while questioning him about the robbery, had asked him if there was anyone who could stay with him while his dad was recovering in hospital. Archie had lied through his teeth, said that his mom had come to town to help out with everything. Keller believed him, and a part of Archie almost wished that he hadn’t, wished that the older had called him out on the lie and made him tell the ugly truth.

His friends are all walking on egg shells around him, all of them sketch around the topic, afraid to say the wrong thing and upset Archie. Except for Jughead who has insisted on staying with Archie up until this point, until Archie told him to go spend time with his new foster family.

“Are you sure about this? Cause I can ask them if I could-.”

“Dude, I’ll be fine, I swear. You don’t wanna get in trouble with your case worker, you can call me later. Go.”

Jughead leaves after that, concern still written all over his face. He lets out a shaky breath as he watches his best friend leave, wishing that he’d said yes, wishes that he’d begged Jughead to stay. Sliding down the front door, Archie rubs a hand over his tired eyes, sick of the exhausted feeling that had nestled itself into his body.

Archie hasn’t slept either, at least it feels to him like he hasn’t. He’d been having nightmares since before the shooting happened, but now every time he closes his eyes he finds himself staring down the barrel of a gun. If it’s not that, then it’s Grundy’s Ex-Husband, standing over him with a crow bar and Archie’s blood on his knuckles. It’s been a week and a half and all he’s really done is take power naps, never sleeping more than half an hour at a time.

He knows that it’s not healthy, but what else is he supposed to do?

While he sits there, trying to figure out a solution to their money issues, Vegas comes over and noses at his face, whining lightly.

 _Right, I should feed him_ Archie thinks to himself.

Walking into the kitchen, he stares at the refrigerator likes it’s a foreign object. On top of everything else, he hasn’t been able to keep his food down. Every time that he eats it makes him feel nauseas, and no matter what his dreams are about, they leave him hunched over the toilet seat. He hates it, he wants to be able to enjoy breakfast before school again and pizza and _feeling full_ without vomiting afterwards.

Vegas barks at him and he startles, dropping his bowl for food. Archie winces when it shatters across the floor, sighing as he moves to clean up the mess. He hates how jittery he’s been lately, hates how his life seems to be in shambles at his feet. He hates how things have ended for him, for all of his friends.

Archie wants to change everything, wants things to go back to they were the night of the Jubilee. He just wants to feel like himself again.

*   

Archie is at lunch the first time that he sees Miss Grundy again.

He looks up from his mostly full plate and sees her, twenty feet away with the same simple smile that she always wore. She waves at him, and he looks down, feeling his stomach seize with panic.

_No. This isn’t happening, she’s not real. She can’t be, she left town, she’s not here._

When he looks up again, she’s gone, as if she’d never been there in the first place. He tells himself that he’s just tired, that only getting four hours of sleep in the last three days wasn’t doing him any justice. He swears that he’s going to take a nap instead of doing homework when he goes to visit his dad that night.  

Then, as he’s walking in he sees a woman sitting in the waiting room, and when she turns to look at him she’s wearing Grundy’s face, crying this time. It frightens Archie so much that he turns around, walks home, then locks the door behind him.

That night, he sleeps for two hours before he dreams that both Grundy and her Ex-Husband show up at his house; her Ex holds a gun to her temple while she points another at the center of Archie’s chest. The dream leaves him unsettled and wide awake. Fed up with being exhausted all the time, he goes into his dad’s bathroom and opens up the medicine cabinet. Archie shakes out a couple of sleeping pills into his hand then swallows them dry. He knows it’s a placebo effect, but he feels the meds kick in almost immediately.

When gets back to his room, he barely makes it back to his bed before he’s out cold. Once he wakes up, it’s three in the afternoon and he has five missed calls and two voicemails on his phone. It freaks him out so much that he flushes the rest of the sleeping pills. It’s not like his dad has much use for them right now anyways.   

*

Archie falls asleep at the lunch table and Jughead doesn’t know whether to laugh at him or to feel bad. He knows that his friend hasn’t been doing very well the last few weeks, but Jughead isn’t sure how to help either. Archie had distanced himself from all of his friends, spending all of his free time with his Dad at the hospital.

Jughead had tried to do more, had tried to stay with Archie longer, but his friend had shut him down, swore he was fine. Jughead knew it was a lie, but at the same time, he wasn’t sure how to address Archie’s recent behavior without sounding insensitive.

Jughead watches as someone walks by their table and brushes Archie’s shoulder, causing him to startle awake.

Archie gasps as he regains his senses, eyes darting around frantically. Eventually they land on Jughead, who is giving him the most miserable, yet concerned look that he’s ever seen.

“You good?”

He opens his mouth to speak, but then someone behind him lets out a loud bark of laughter and Archie nearly flies out of his seat. He closes his eyes, rubbing a hand over his face, willing himself to calm down for once. He can’t, for some reason it feels like someone is hammering at the space between his ribs with a pick axe.

“Hey, you should go home, man.” Jughead says. “You’re not looking too good. Class can wait for another day, huh?”

Archie gives him a half nod in his tense state, then mumbles something about texting him when he gets home. Then, he gets up from the table and walks right out of the school, the jacket sitting in his locker be damned. He doesn’t look up, just keeps his head down and goes wherever his feet take him. Once he finally looks up, he’s surprised that he isn’t in his driveway, but standing outside of Pop’s.

_Pop’s is in the opposite direction of my house from school…how long have I been walking for?_

Despite still feeling like his chest is going to cave in on itself, he pulls open the door and forces himself inside. He hasn’t been here since that morning, since his dad had been shot right in front of him. For moment, he looks over and swears that he can still see it, swears he can still his dad lying on the floor with blood leaking out of his body.

Archie realizes that someone had been speaking to him and whips his head forward again.

Pop Tate is on the other side of the counter, giving him the same look that Jughead had been wearing earlier.

“Are you okay, son?”

A million thoughts come to surface, all of them about how he feels like he’s dangling off the side of a cliff while also standing at the top, attempting to pull himself up with a fraying rope. But he doesn’t say anything, instead, the overwhelming feeling of sheer panic kicks into full gear and Archie swears that he’s going to be sick. He turns on his heel, leaving Pop Tate behind and pushing open the door.

The cold air doesn’t faze him as he tries to get himself to breathe properly. After sucking in large gulps air and still feeling like he’s breathing through a straw, he gives up on trying to calm down. He has to look down and check that _yes, my legs are still attached to my body._ The part of his brain that isn’t having a complete meltdown is working overtime, telling the rest of his body to finds its way home from here.

When Archie finally makes it home, he has not a clue as to how much time has passed. His hand is halfway to the door before his brain supplies two facts. First, his house keys are in his backpack, in _his locker_. Second, he can’t feel his hands, but he can see them trembling in front of him. He attempts to make a fist and nothing happens, his hands don’t move. It doesn’t matter to him whether it’s due to the cold or the feeling of static electricity running throughout his body, he just wants to be inside already.

Archie stumbles around the side of the house, making his way to the back door. In his confused state, he manages to get the door open. He doesn’t make more than two feet inside the door before he trips over Vegas’ leash, crashing to the ground. He can’t bring himself to get up.    

He couldn’t tell you how long he lied there for, with the back-door still open and himself barely able to function properly. He sits up at some point, wondering why he can’t feel anything before he thinks to himself _you walked home in a t-shirt, you’re going into shock, dumbass._ He stares at his legs, kicked out in front of him and wonders how he got like this. Since when had his life gotten to this point without him realizing it.

He’s not sure how much longer he sits there before his friends show up, before they come bursting through the front door and run right for him. At this point, Archie feels like he’s watching the whole thing unravel from somebody else’s point of view, like he’s standing six feet away and watching this mess unfold before his eyes. 

He watches Jughead and Veronica fall to their knees beside him. He watches himself flinch and recoil when Veronica’s warm hands come into contact with his face. It’s not until he watches Jughead pull one of his limp arms over his shoulder and hoist him to his feet that Archie starts to come back to himself.

The next thing that he knows he’s sitting in the bathtub, fully clothed and soaking wet, hot water spraying down on him from the shower head. His whole body is shaking as he looks towards the doorway, he notices Jughead and Veronica are both standing there, looking at him anxiously. Both of them come forward when he makes an attempt to pull himself out of the water.

“Not yet, Arch,” Jughead says firmly. “We don’t know how long you were in the cold, you could be hypothermic.”

Archie tries to speak but it comes out slurred and downright incoherent. Jughead rubs a hand over his mouth, looking far more worried as he pulls out his phone and walks away.

He tries again. “Can I g-get out now, R-Ronnie?”

Veronica bites her lip, then nods, moving to turn the water off. She seats him on the edge of the tub, meticulous in pulling off his wet clothes and getting him into the dry ones she’d set aside as quickly as she can. When he doesn’t meet her eye, she grabs a spare towel and begins to dry his hair. He sighs at the touch and she feels a little relief herself.

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?” She asks curiously.

“For being needy.” He mumbles.

Veronica takes his chin in one of her hands, encouraging him to look at her. She waits until he meets her eye before speaking again.

“There is _absolutely_ _nothing wrong_ with needing a little help.” She says, her tone serious but caring.

Then, somehow, for the first time in six weeks, Archie’s lip is trembling and he begins to cry in earnest. He sobs, loud and obnoxious, hiding his face in Veronica’s stomach just like he had that morning in the hospital waiting room. He chokes out another apology, repeating it like it’s going to change everything and Veronica shushes him. She runs a hand through his still damp hair, and he feels himself begin to let go of all the bad feelings he’d been holding onto so tightly.

**Author's Note:**

> Feelings are hard.
> 
> Thanks for reading my fic! If you liked it please feel free to let me know with a kudos or a comment. If you have a prompt, you can leave it here or at my riverdale blog via tumblr (thejugheadchronicles) and I'll see what I can do. Thanks again for reading, have a great day!


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